2018 – Florida to Canada

Our cycle trip from Florida to Canada via the East Coast Greenway, the Southern Tier and the Underground Railroad Cycle routes

Sand sea and time zones

Posted by on 30, Apr 2018 in 2018 - Florida to Canada, Tilly the Tandem, USA | 0 comments

Sand sea and time zones

This part of the coast is called the Forgotten Coast and is mainly gorgeous houses on stilts right on the beach. It’s quieter and much more to our liking than the commercialised areas we were going to be cycling into later. Mexico Beach was the last forgotten stop before we hit the US high rise equivalent of Blackpool, well, with without all the miserable weather obviously. Our camp site was set on the other side of the road from the sea right next to the main road…. Or there was a tempting hotel right on the beach opposite. We did one of those look left, look right, look left...

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Would you like to supersize that?

Posted by on 25, Apr 2018 in 2018 - Florida to Canada, Tilly the Tandem, USA | 0 comments

Would you like to supersize that?

Everything is bigger in the states, the drinks 44oz (1.25L, 143g sugar) is the standard size people get for a drink in the garages as it’s usually the same price as a small and often includes free refills as well and this probably goes a long way to explaining the supersize people. It’s not so much, does my bum look big in this, more does my bum actually fit into it in the first place! Naturally the cars are huge, though there are many more European size cars now than when we last travelled the states. But equally the pickups have got bigger at the same time too. And noisier. I...

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Attacked? Tick!

Posted by on 14, Apr 2018 in 2018 - Florida to Canada, Tilly the Tandem, USA | 0 comments

Attacked? Tick!

We’ve learnt the hard way that you can’t cycle day in day out without a rest, especially if your bike weighs a quarter of a tonne! You must have days off. Incidentally, learning the hard way involves getting slower and slower and eventually pedalling as hard as you can and falling off as you’re not actually moving! So, for our days off we’d decided to coincide our rest time with a rainy day and visit the Floridian capital Talahassee. There’s a lovely rails to trail path that leads up from the Gulf coast to the state capital which is the oldest in Florida. A...

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We’ve got wind!

Posted by on 7, Apr 2018 in 2018 - Florida to Canada, Tilly the Tandem, USA | 2 comments

We’ve got wind!

I know, I know! We’re veggies and Jon loves beans – of course we’ve got wind! But it’s not that type of wind! The wind has changed! At last weve had a couple of days where we’ve not been cycling into the wind and it’s heaven! Our average speed has gone up from 12 to 19 and we’ve been flying through the countryside really enjoying it all. As we are out in the sticks though the local roads are all gravel and unless you want to look like a ghost from Scooby Doo after every truck passes you they’re best avoided so we’ve been stuck on the main...

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Moving inland

Posted by on 6, Apr 2018 in 2018 - Florida to Canada, Tilly the Tandem, USA | 0 comments

Moving inland

We’d left the tourist trade behind now and were more in Trumpton as evidenced by the gardens that looked like a Junk yard, the shanty town style mobile homes that looked like they had come off badly against multiple hurricanes and of course multiple US flags, Reelect Trump and God Bless America posters, with the occasional Confederate flag thrown in just for good measure. These areas were much much poorer than the south. Despite the poverty the churches were pristine and plentiful – 1 per kilometer at times in a sparsely populated area, but that would prove a Godsend for us later...

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The Largest cycle network in the world….

Posted by on 30, Mar 2018 in 2018 - Florida to Canada, Tilly the Tandem, USA | 2 comments

The Largest cycle network in the world….

The American Adventure Cycle Association boasts that the US will soon have the largest cycle network in the world. This sounds impressive and is certainly a great goal to set but the reality is that much of this consists of a shoulder at the side of the equivalent of the M25 and it’s little wonder that we rarely see a cyclist and certainly never see one outside small towns. We’ve now covered 600km and we are still to see our first cycle tourers – something we’ve never experienced before – here we’re pioneers and so many people have told us that too, as...

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